Weekly Quiz!

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Good luck! 😀 

93% of Golfers Do This

I’ve spent years digging through golf data. So when HackMotion told me they’ve analyzed more than 12 million swings, you know I had to take a look.

Here’s how often golfers show some of the most common swing faults:

• Too much wrist extension at impact: 93%

• Casting (early release): 89%

• Cupped wrist at the top: 86%

• Pulling the handle: 84%

• Inside takeaway: 82%

If you’ve got one (or more) of these, you’re in very good company.

HackMotion is a small sensor that sits on your lead wrist. Hit a handful of shots and the app spots your biggest faults. Then it gives you drills to fix them, with real-time audio feedback that tells you when a rep is right. You don’t even need to look at the screen.

My buddy Mark Crossfield just put it to the test in a new video on his YouTube channel. Give it a watch.

HackMotion is a sponsor of this newsletter, and their support keeps it free for you. All November, you can get 20% off every package (up to $200 off). One-time payment, no subscription, free shipping and a 30-day risk-free guarantee.

Check out HackMotion here.

How Many Greens Should You Hit?

A buddy of mine hit 11 greens a couple Saturdays ago. He was fired up. The next weekend he hit 5. He texted me asking what broke with his swing. 🤣 

The answer? Nothing.

Let’s get a little more detail on this. Time for a deep dive into the Arccos database (DATALOU15 saves 15%).

What's Normal?

I grabbed millions of rounds from Arccos over the past few years. Here's how many greens in regulation golfers average per round in this data set:

• Scratch: 10.8

• 5 index: 9.1

• 10 index: 7.5

• 15 index: 6.3

• 20 index: 5.3

Each 5-shot jump in skill is worth about 1 to 2 more greens per round.

Everyone Has Good Days and Bad Days

This is the part that might surprise you. A lot of people expect better players to be a lot more consistent from round to round with how many greens in regulation they hit.

How much GIR’s bounce around from one round to the next is almost the same at every skill level. The number of GIR’s a scratch golfer hits in a given round has just as much variance as a 20 index.

Check out the chart below. The dark bar is the range of greens each skill level hits on a “normal” day. For this purpose a “normal” day is about 3 out of 4 “typical” rounds. (not your outliers).

Every bar is about the same size (width). The bar is just further to the right as skill gets better. And look how much they overlap. A scratch golfer's off day (8 greens) looks a lot like a 10 index's average day.

My buddy is an 10 index. For him, 11 greens in reg is a really good day. And 5 greens? That's still a pretty normal day.

What Kind of Day Did You Have?

Here's a quick way to grade your ball striking.

A “normal” day is nearly 3 out of every 4 rounds. Really good days and really bad days happen the rest of the time.

If you want to see the full breakdown, here it is. Table below shows what percent of the time golfers at a given skill level will hit a given number of greens. For example, a 5 index will have exactly 7 greens in regulation in 15% of their rounds.

My Thoughts

Don't judge your ball striking from one round of golf. Having a swing of 5 or 6 greens in regulation from one round to the next is normal for every golfer, at every skill level.

If you want to know how your ball striking is really doing, look at your average GIRs over your last 15+ rounds. And the next time you “only” hit 5 greens (or whatever that number is for you), check the data above before you beat yourself up too much. You were probably within the “normal” range of GIRs for your skill level.

See you next week!

 Finally...

• Advertise your business to 40,000+ readers of this newsletter.

• Shop Arccos Golf here. (Use code DATALOU15 to save 15%)

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• Start your fitness journey with P4S Golf here.

• Listen to the “Hack it Out Golf” podcast on Apple or Spotify.

• Submit ideas or feedback here.
  
  Have a great week!